Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

ISABEL DE SANTO DOMINGO, prioress at Segovia, passing through

FATHER JEROME GRATIAN OF THE MOTHER OF GOD, permanent presence Aliases:

ELISEUS, PAUL, JOANES

TERESITA and ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, at prayer

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, psychologist

VOICE OF HIS MAJESTY THE LORD

VOICE OF A FUTURE EDITOR OF TERESA’S WORKS

ACT 2, SCENE 1

Cast as above, minus the VOICE OF HIS MAJESTY THE LORD

The soul in agony here enters a terrain that rather resembles that of my MPH, were it not for the way the Holy Mother’s faith has changed it into a well-watered, flower-filled garden. Here, at the extreme of being, extreme beings trail their sufferings and raptures, their obsessions and exaltations, deliriums and OCDs, hysterical passions, manic self-punishments, dull melancholies, and searing moments of lucidity. Filtered through the body and the word, these states at the limit — hers, theirs — appear as alluring as passion, as beautiful as Paradise, as necessary as ideals.

La Madre has rallied a little: it’s the upturn before the end. She can speak again, although with difficulty. The words that garland her memories and premonitions elude her throat and mouth. Almost silent, voluble inside, she relies upon the body more than ever, and marks the passage of time in beats of sound, touch, taste, smell. The failing Madre’s flesh is no more than a love letter by now, a letter endlessly edited, corrected, and rewritten.

The skin thirsts for cooling waterfalls. The tongue cries out for pungent tastes. The shattered bones dream of strolling among fragrant lilies. When loneliness is so immense, to whom can these entreaties be addressed? Absence makes one mad. So does the longing for presence.

ANGELA, in a normal voice. One day in 1575…was it in February or May? At the Convent of Beas…the Lord told me that He could grant my wishes. (Pause.) And as a token of that promise He put a handsome ring onto my finger, an amethyst. What divine bounty toward my sorry life, worthy of the fires of Hell! I know it was delirious nonsense to have felt this wedding to be real, in broad daylight. Christ as a marriage broker, un casamentero, that’s insane! Foolishness…I can laugh at it now.

VOICE OF A FUTURE EDITOR OF TERESA’S WORKS, attempting to moderate the harshness of a judgment that shows her, even on the brink of death, being as tough on herself as ever. Madre, you noted in that context “I am writing this foolishness,”¹ but the fragment is apocryphal, of dubious authenticity, and the Church does not recognize it.

TERESA: You, too, love me too well, Father. (Looks at him for a long time.) Let me confide what comes to my mind about all this now. Was it not foolishness on my part to have seen — around the time I received the amethyst ring — the Lord join my right hand to Fr. Gratian’s? And to have heard Him say that I should take that master as His representative, all the days of my life? (Raises chin, looks straight ahead.) Now, then, Father, don’t back down, I pray you. I take it upon myself to admit that I committed that desatino and many more, fair enough. Neither right nor wrong, but inevitable. Logical. Well, yes, I’m a logical woman! If you think about it, all that kind of thing derives straight from the sacred humanity of Christ. And there aren’t many of us prepared to take on the full implications of Cristo como hombre. (Knowing smile.) Please don’t make that face, Father, I know the repugnance I inspire in you. I have felt my abjection and soiling intimately, I assure you. (Stops smiling.) But after so much pain and contrition, the disgust turned even so to pleasure, to desire, and — but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know — into a clandestine relationship with my Eliseus, my Paul, my Joanes. He needed me. He needed that secret friend, code-name Laurencia, or sometimes Angela.…That’s what I called myself in letters to him that he most certainly has kept, you’ll see. (Hand stroking the veil she imagines is still covering her disheveled head: incorrigible coquetry.) His letters, no, I haven’t kept them. He didn’t write often, anyway, we’ll never know what he really thought, or how different it was to what I suggested he think.…(Tender voice.) I elevated dear Gratian to the place of God, outwardly and inwardly, I confess it. I needed those antojos, cravings, whims, and on reflection, they weren’t incompatible with the Incarnation. (Pause.) That’s all. Mad! (Broad smile.)

The enigmatic grin brightens La Madre’s face for so long that her two nurses suppose she must be getting an early glimpse of her Spouse.